All the World
by Windswift
Summary: All the world's a stage, and justice serves the puppeteer. Bakura Ryou perfect puppet, and sadistic puppet master


Bakura Ryou, perfect puppet, and sadistic puppet master...  
  
I think one of the things I enjoy most about Yami no Bakura is that he takes the most innocent of things, and manages to corrupt them into terrible things while all the while sounding as if he sincerely believes he is in the right, and one of the good guys... and that is somewhat the basis for this fic. That, and all his speeches thus far in Shounen Jump's rendition of the Monster World arc.  
  
Please excuse my persistent misuse of the term "marionette." Usually it strictly refers to puppets that are moved using strings, but having a lack of a better synonym in a fic that's all about puppets... most of the time I'm using marionette as a word for a puppet in general.  
  
Disclaimer— As soon as I convince the world that Takahashi is nothing more than my extremely life-like puppet, YuGiOh will be mine! [cue evil laughter, stage right]

**_All the World_**

**...**  
Japanese:   
kaachan- [okaasan] an affectionate use of 'mother'   
owari- the end   
**...**  
  
My father took me to see a puppet show once, when I was small. I recall that my first impression was that somebody had broken the top doors off kaachan's wardrobe and covered it with a blanket to hide the damage. Then the red curtains sprung open and the puppets shot up, and I missed the first five minutes due to crying into my father's shirt.  
  
Thankfully I quickly grew out of that phase, though I continued to jump for a few more years. I soon fascinated myself with that miniature theater, falling in love with the worlds and problems not my own, instead belonging to the delightful cloth and wood people who always seemed to bounce back. Nothing ever truly harmed them, except for one incident involving a nail sticking out of the stage's walls. I saw it catch the poor puppet about it's collar seam, and his head fell right off. _I _promptly fell back into my father's shirt in another fit of sobbing, but that's a different story.  
  
Perhaps all of this influenced my later love for role-playing games— I could guide my character around in his own staged world, and in the course of our adventure story no harm came to either he or I.  
  
As a child, the fact that the puppeteer had complete and utter dominion over the whole world never bothered me. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose... And maybe I always pegged them as that invisible, omnipresent guiding force that bestowed the life in the marionettes. I didn't worry because they never led their charges into anything that I viewed as real harm. If the little actors never cried, it meant that everything was okay.  
  
The dolls' master freely dealt justice in any way he saw fit during his stories. On a bad day, Judy might belabor Punch with a stick for nothing so much as looking the wrong way. We would laugh, because we knew Punch would soon spring up and smack Judy right back. It was horrible and cruel, but the puppets would laugh with us the whole while. If they didn't give the whole ordeal a second thought, why should we?  
  
I never attend puppet shows anymore, though. I can't bear to sit there in the audience wondering... what if there's no puppeteer with his hand inside it, what if no one is pulling the strings of that marionette...?  
  
My third traumatic theater ordeal occurred when I learned that my beloved miniature actors were not really alive, merely pretend people. Without the skilled hands of a marionette master to guide them, no magic existed in the limp little dolls.  
  
Until I lived it, it never stuck me as barbaric, the way the characters possessing the thoughts and feelings of real people were created solely for the purpose of entertaining us. No one ever gave a second thought to the lifeless actors after the curtains drew closed and the job was over. They were only able to live on stage, and then never freely, because they always had a part they were assigned to act out— nothing more, nothing less.  
  
Puppets have no lives, only stories.  
  
We like to say that "all the world's a stage." It gives us an excuse to make others laugh at our actions while we don't have to risk our egos being hurt because of it. But to the marionettes, their stage _is_ all the world. Beyond that wooden platform and the heavy curtains lies the great nothingness of implied sets and scenes they can't reach. To fall off the edge of that world is to end your part, and temporarily, your life.  
  
Everything on stage that can happen, will happen, has happened, occurs in that open box. The theater is a strange world where you can touch the sky, only if it's painted on the background, but you can't walk down the path that disappears over the hills and into the horizon, off into the great unknown.  
  
I hope no puppet ever has the urge to become a wanderer.  
  
For all my childhood, though, these marionettes were a constant. It comforted me to assure myself that despite all the dangers in the tales they played out, they would always end up happy and unharmed [the good ones, at least]. The ease with which I lost myself in those little confined worlds kept me blissfully oblivious to my own life and struggles for a while, and to the potential plight of the small performers.  
  
But there comes a time when one realizes that even something as innocent as a puppet theater must be used cautiously, because things can be twisted and corrupted until they're no longer so well and good...

**...**   
  
When the other me first appeared, I think he honestly liked to believe that he was doing me a favor. He stayed hidden and quiet backstage, only exerting his control when he stood to gain something. He greatly enjoyed playing the part of puppeteer as one of the "good guys."  
  
Sometimes he would control me directly, fitting into my skin like a hand into a sock puppet. He wore my face, used my name, spoke with my voice... but he was not truly me. I was never aware of this, though— bitterly enough, I can say that as a good puppet, a tool such as I should not be conscious to object to its master's doings.  
  
He then set out into the world to deal his own ideas of justice to the immediate Japanese populous. A favorite of his was to imprison the souls of people who'd lost to him in lead miniatures as a "game penalty." He played his games rather indiscriminately, making living puppets out of my friends who lost against me in my Monster World game, as well as challenging people who'd picked on me to a Shadow Game, which they inevitably lost.  
  
Of course, when victimizing my friends, he often claimed that he was granting my wishes and allowing us to all play together forever.  
  
Sometimes the other me would leave me in my own self, but slyly direct my thoughts or actions in the direction he wanted, using me as if pulling the strings on a marionette. Having been a thief in his past life, he was too stealthy for me to detect, and never out-right enough to make me question myself.  
  
He used me as an ideal puppet and innocent fool for a good long while before I began to suspect anything.  
  
But the other me showed his true forte in my Monster World game. There, playing the role of game master, he was in his element. I unwittingly took a sadistic puppet master, gave him a theater, and enabled him to create his own puppets when I invited my friends over to play.  
  
He fondly believed that the true beauty of an RPG lay in the fact that you had to play a role, become a character. He had always liked acting— after all, he impersonated me so well. He took the souls he'd won, put them in the characters, and gave them the board as the stage. He forced them to play their part, and slowly he wore away their past life and person until they _truly_ became the character, and the game board their world...  
  
All the world's a stage, and justice serves the puppeteer...   
  
**...   
Owari  
...**   
  
_-Windswift Shinju_


End file.
